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The browns keep things ticking over.
Sun 10th April, 2016
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A drizzly ole morning in Turangi today with more rain and showers forecast for the first half of the week. A few anglers around but its been fairly quiet since the last report ... a bit like the fishing.
I've been on the river most days and I think its fair to say rainbows have been a little thin on the ground ... but they've had their moments.
I can't remember which day it was but other than a brown I'd had a pretty uneventful morning. Late afternoon I dropped into one of the town spots and hooked up five times in about half an hour. Now if that had been my only day fishing I may have been writing a very different report!
Over the last ten days there have been some reasonable rainbows caught but not many. I've stopped off at the lookout above Admirals a few times and on each occasion have only spotted one or two fish in there.
But the browns help to keep things ticking over.
I had a late afternoon session with Mike Fransham and started in the place I'd had five the day before.
It hammered down when we got there and the river around us began to color up with the run off caused by this localized downpour. Mike hooked up within a few minutes but that turned out to be it and he decided to head off to the Breakfast Pool.
 By the time I joined him a little while later, he'd caught the brown above, nynphing the slow stuff at the tail of the pool.
The rain had already stopped and a young family out for their tea-time stroll had walked down from the footpath to watch Mike fishing.
A couple of casts later he hooked up again and noticing Mum, Dad and the kids offered the rod to their very excited six year old son.
Unfortunately my camera was out of battery but the look on that little boys face as Mike helped him land his first rainbow made our day.
  Most of the fish I've caught this week have again been on the czech nymph fishing the runs or under the dry in the shallower water.
Both of these methods are perfect for some of the places I prefer to fish when I'm after browns but neither of them is the complete answer to catching fish everywhere on the Tongariro.
All methods in common use on the river have their merits.
And all of them will work at some time but I like to move around and I'm a lazy bugger when it comes to re-rigging rods when I'm fishing.
I think a lot of anglers are the same and would keep on walking if the next stretch of water called for a change of setup.
Currently I carry three different setups ... I'll need a golf trolley before long!
Its not a very good photograph, however, the arrows in the image above indicate a defined seam where the slow water near the bank merges with the faster flows of the main current. It runs the whole length of this stretch but most of it is out of shot. The depth varies between two and four feet and the river bed is littered with rocks and boulders. There are places like this all along the river.
The riffles upstream are loaded with dissolved oxygen and provide an ideal habitat for caddis larvae, mayfly nymphs and other aquatic insects that trout eat. Some of these get displaced from the safety of the rocks and stones where they live or intentionally enter the drift to relocate or hatch. In other words everything a trout could wish for is right here ... oxygen ... shelter ... and food.
This spot is only fishable from the TRB and most anglers tackle the entire pool with the indicator. But the indicator won't really cut it here.
You're attempting to imitate insects being washed downstream or if its during a hatch, insects making their way to the surface. This is where the dry and dropper scores.
Suspending your flies under a big dry is less likely to spook the fish and will give you a far more realistic presentation of the scenario your attempting to imitate.
When the browns are in the river they love spots like this and will often be on the inside of that seam in the slower water, unfortunately as I've mentioned many times before that's where a lot of anglers choose to stand.
 I've experimented with dozens of different large dries over the years but you won't beat a size 6 or 8 parachute hackle Madam X.
This American attractor pattern has been around since the eighties and was first tied by Doug Swisher, although the original was very different to the fly we usually see in New Zealand.
It stands out well in most light conditions, is buoyant even in the rough and tumble stuff and those rubber legs waving around will often induce a take when the fish are tuned in to big terrestrials like cicada's.
 
So its not brilliant out there ... but neither is it a waste of time.
If you like chasing browns there are enough around to make things interesting but I don't think any of the ones I've hooked so far this year have been on the indicator. I've had a few memorable encounters with some of them czech nymphing however 5wts and browns on the Tongariro don't always end well ... but its a lot of fun!
An unsettled outlook with some rain around for the start of the week. Mid-week it improves then more damp weather as we head into next week.
Keep trying guys
Tight lines
Mike |
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